Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Gary Thompson: Gary Thompson production

LAST YEAR'S phenomenal slate of animation - Pixar, hand-drawn Disney, Miyazaki, Henry Selick - seemed to offer everything but Wallace & Gromit.

LAST YEAR'S phenomenal slate of animation - Pixar, hand-drawn Disney, Miyazaki, Henry Selick - seemed to offer everything but Wallace & Gromit.

That oversight will be corrected tomorrow, when the Ritz at the Bourse showcases this year's Oscar-nominated animated short films, including Nick Park's latest Wallace & Gromit.

His 30-minute stop-motion short, "A Matter of Loaf and Death," has man and dog operating a bakery called "Top Bun," designed by Park with his usual love of mechanical complexity. (And puns. Delivery service is "dough to dough.") The story line finds Gromit trying to figure out why London's bakers keep disappearing, while Wallace is distracted by a woman.

This is Park's sixth Oscar nomination, making him the favorite in this category, but by no means a sure thing.

There's some buzz about a 17-minute French short called "Logorama," which imagines Los Angeles as a city composed entirely of corporate logos. Even the people are corporate characters - little AOL outlines, or mustachioed Pringles guys. The action is built around a standard chase scene, but the real action may be legal. French animators reportedly sought no corporate approvals for their use of logos, so now's your chance to see what they've wrought before the lawyers step in.

The slate also includes "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty," a six-minute English film about an Irish grandmother delivering her own version of the classic fairy tale, making it much darker in the telling.

The other nominees are "The Lady and the Reaper," an eight-minute Spanish film about an old woman's encounter with death, and "French Roast," an eight-minute comic piece about a rich swell at a cafe who rebuffs a beggar, then finds he has no money to pay his bill.

The animated shorts appear to be suitable for older children and family viewing, but keep in mind the films are not rated by the MPAA. You can preview short samples at www.theoscarshorts.com.

The Ritz at the Bourse will also offer this year's slate of Oscar-nominated live-action short films, a separate program also opening tomorrow. Descriptions and previews are available at www.theoscarshorts.com.

Incidentally, animation buffs curious about "The Secret of Kells," the Irish animated movie nominated for Best Animated Feature, should know that it opens in Philadelphia on March 19, also at the Ritz at the Bourse.